Leicestershire win Div2 at J4NCL 3rd weekend

At the final J4NCL weekend of the season, we played one team in Div 1 and one in Div 2. Leicester Blues managed to win Div 2 despite an inauspicious start which saw the team comprehensively beaten in the first round. Thereafter the team managed to win the remaining 4 rounds to swoop into the lead for the first time at the conclusion of the last round. Having played a fine drawn game against a very highly graded player in the 1st round when playing in the reserves, Umar Syed then proceeded to win the remaining 4 games, this time playing for the team each time. Matthew Lo played in the final two rounds on Sunday and took a win and then a mature and ‘strategic’ draw to clinch the match as the final game to finish in round 5. Jason Lv also had a good weekend winning 3 games.

In a closely matched Div 1, Leicester Reds went the entire weekend unbeaten with an unusual 5 straight draws. Unfortunately this wasn’t quite enough at the conclusion of Saturday to put the team in the top pool (of 4 teams) on the Sunday and so the team ended up in 6th place overall. Alastair Mottram- Epson had a great competition winning all 5 games on board 4 and Tom Brown relished the tougher challenge of Div 1 on board 1 to take 3 wins out of 5.

It’s been a very successful J4NCL season for the team with 3rd place in Div 2 on weekend 1 and then winning Div 2 on both the 2nd and 3rd weekends.